upon a time
by Empatheia
Summary: [Allen x Rhode] All he had to do was read betwee the lines. Unfortunately, he understood nothing of women.


**A/N: **Written for the September round of flashfics on LiveJournal.

Late, because I had a hell of a time unearthing this plot bunny. I quite like it now that I've found it, though I suspect there may be a teensy section near the end that I want to expand on at some point. It's not a priority so please don't send silly reviews telling me to make it longer or I'll have a fit of pique and not do it at all. :)

I referenced a few fairytales in this, heavily paraphrased or outright mangled... cookies for anyone who can identify them.

Enjoy!

-Eia

**xxxxx**

_**...upon a time...**_

**xxxxx**

The first thing Allen heard on waking was the last thing he wanted to.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"

Allen was in far too much pain and had far too little caffeine in his veins to deal with Angry Kanda, and said so in the most firm whisper he could manage.

"As if I care. Answer the damn question or I'll--"

"You'll what?" Allen interrupted, smiling wryly, "stab me again? I'm sure that'll work very well, why don't you try that."

And of course that led to Kanda pacing ragefully around his room for half an hour, lecturing him in that low and lethal voice he was so good at, periodically stabbing a long finger in Allen's general direction to emphasize his point... which was essentially this: Allen was an idiot, and did idiotic things, and this made Kanda Angry.

As this was not Allen's fault, he didn't bother with guilt. As a matter of fact, his conscience felt remarkably clear today. "Where is she?" he asked out of the blue, interrupting Kanda mid-tirade by doing so and thus risking his life all over again.

Kanda took a deep breath, usually the precursor to a long string of curses against Allen's lineage and manlihood among other things, but instead only spat "three doors to the left," and stalked out. Had he had feathers, they would have been in spectacular disarray by that point, which would undoubtedly have made him yet angrier. As soon as he was gone, however, Allen let all thought of Kanda and his legendary fury slip out of his head on the next breath.

In the room three doors left of his own, there was a girl, and she was alive. That knowledge made everything else-- including the red throbbing in his belly where the sword had viciously bitten into him-- completely irrelevant.

It would be days before he could stand again, Allen knew, but when he could he would go and visit her. He wasn't looking forward to it overmuch, seeing as how he didn't like her very much and she mostly seemed to want to eat him, but at the same time the time passed far too slowly. He willed his wounds to heal faster, faster, so he could see for himself that his grand gesture hadn't been a foolish, useless thing to do like Kanda thought.

It couldn't have been.

xnxnx

Whatever he had expected (a wan smile of welcome? a capricious wink and a request for a story? a surprisingly unguarded expression in sleep?) it was not this.

Rhode Camelot, the wry demon-child he'd been so fascinated with, was completely gone. In her place was a thin, sallow, empty-eyed waif curled up in the farthest corner of her vast white bed, staring silently at nothing. The only indication that she was alive and not simply an oddly pretty doll was her left hand, which traced slow, jagged shapes in the air a few inches from her coverlet. She was a husk, like the shell of a hazelnut after the moist heart had been taken out and devoured.

Allen turned around, went back to his room, and counted the stones of the far wall until Linali came and made him eat.

It had been useless after all. What good was it to throw oneself in front of a sword one knows is sharper than anything in the world in order to save a girl if she isn't even going to remember one's face? She was already dead. He'd failed.

Somehow, it would have been easier to accept if not for that left hand, tracing the faces she still remembered even though her eyes were too bottomless for her tears to brim over.

If not for that, he might have been able to let her go.

It was there, however, so after two days of sullen depression, Allen slapped himself on the face twice on each cheek, stood up, and vowed not to give up until she came back... all the way back.

Shortly thereafter, he marched into her room armed with a pile of fairytale stories and sat in the small chair next to her bed. He would read until she knew the stories by heart if he had to. Sooner or later she would have to wake up, even if only to tell him to shut his fool mouth and let her rest.

Allen opened to the first page of Cinderella and took a breath.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl..._

xnxnx

Some nights, he just sat with her and stared into the nothing, trying to see whatever it was that so commanded her attention.

Every night he came to the conclusion that there was nothing there... but perhaps that was what held her, the absence of everything. She'd had more than enough of everything to last her a hundred lifetimes, quite literally. Perhaps the empty dark was soothing to eyes which had seen far too much, the quiet easy on deafened ears.

He didn't begrudge her this rest. He only wished she wasn't doing it somewhere he couldn't reach her at.

..._and the princess slept for a hundred years in a castle ringed with thorns, while the sky turned over her, the moon waxed and waned and waxed again, and the sea wore away at the cliffs around her until only magic held it up. Still she did not wake._

Allen thought this was her favourite story, though it was hard to say why. The incessant motion of her hand stilled somewhat when he read this one. He thought perhaps she empathized with the sleeping beauty. Though she was no golden-haired demigoddess, she was royal in her own way and Allen knew she was lonely. There was no throne left for her to sit on, no servants, no legions to command, and no family left to guide her. She was the last of her kind, and now she was mortal.

He wished he could show her the life waiting for her if she would only wake up. There was a family here, too, one that would take some time to accept her but that would never let her go once she'd proven herself. There was a purpose to life here, even now that the war was over and the Earl flown away over the moon. The remnants of the Akuma still existed, wandering in sad bewilderment over the moors and through the city streets of the world. They deserved their freedom, and the Order would continue to exist until they were all free.

There was happiness here. Though the stones of the tower by the sea were cold and grey, the life within it beat and pulsed like blood through stone arteries.

"Wake up," he told her softly every time he came, and every time he left, but she never did.

_...the mermaid could no more walk on land and breathe his air than he could grow a tail and breathe her water... she sang to him, but he could not hear, mistaking her lullabies for the wind and cry of gulls..._

_...behind the bone bars of their cage, they bided their time until the moment was ripe to kill the witch, wondering silently if it was not better to stay there and eat gingerbread forever... the world outside had been no kinder..._

_...the third brother was wise, and built his house of stone and mortar..._

_...and the dwarves cared for her in their own gruff way, but she wondered often if they were even real at all. Perhaps she was still in a fever-daze from the poison, or perhaps she was dead... either way, she would not complain, for at least the dwarves knew how to smile, and sometimes they would sing for her..._

._..a vast garden of treasure, rubies dripping from the ends of golden branches, emeralds underfoot... "You must not touch," they told him, "the real treasure lies elsewhere." He disbelieved them and stuffed his pockets while they did not look, and found when he turned around that the door out had gone... silver visions could not fill his stomach._

Strangely, it never truly occurred to Allen that she was listening. Reading to her was the only thing he could think of to do, and he liked to think fancifully that she could hear him, but he never really believed it. Within himself, he remained firmly convinced that she was lost and never coming back, though he pushed that conviction as deeply into himself as he could so he would not have to face it. Allen did not handle failure well.

Nevertheless, she grew visibly calmer while he read, and her hand lay still at her side eventually.

One day, he told her their own story as if it were a fairytale, and put that way it did sound quite grandiose. An immortal girlchild turning on her family, an enemy who did not know of her change of heart, an enemy so beloved he was hardly an enemy at all coming just in time to throw himself between her and the sword, explaining to the sword-wielder with his last conscious breath why she should live.

Had he looked at Rhode then rather than out the window, he might have seen the ghost of pain in her eyes, the latest in a long series of almost-expressions and hints.

Allen, unfortunately, understood nothing of women (as Linali could attest) and missed all the signs, then missed them again, and again, day after day.

xxxx

Had he not looked up at exactly that moment, he would have missed it again-- the distant expression in her eyes, and the pair of tears that tumbled from them a moment apart.

Allen stared, convinced for a long time that he was hallucinating. This was mostly because the Rhode he knew never cried, not even to save her life. But they were warm on his fingers when he reached out to brush them away, and her cheek was wet beneath them, and it suddenly became much harder to believe that they were only visions.

"Rhode?" he said, hardly daring to hope. "If you can hear me, please come back. We're all waiting for you. They haven't forgiven you for those who died because of you, but they are willing to understand now that I've told them the stories you told me. I hope you don't mind that I told them, but they might have killed you otherwise. They had to understand."

No answer, but then, he hadn't really expected one.

Allen sighed. He hadn't smiled in a long time. "If only it were simple like the fairytales," he said softly. "If only a kiss was all it took to--"

Her hand, quiescent until then, suddenly described a great curving arc through the air, fingers reaching out towards something he couldn't see.

Something Linali had told him once about the minds of the mad (she knew, as she had been mad once) came to mind, then.

_The paths of memory aren't straight_, she'd said. _Symbols take on much greater meaning, things outside oneself become only an amusing story to observe from behind the looking glass. Things which are meaningless to the awake are matters of great import to the mad, and matters of great import to the awake are but silly trifles. You may see only a black cat, but a dreamer may see the shadow of death bearing down on them. It is a nonsensical world built of riddles and fancies. I shall never go back, but there was comfort in it for me when I needed it._

_Symbols_, Allen thought, _stories_.

Giving up on proprietry, he stood and leaned across the vast flannel expanse to press his lips awkwardly against hers. They were cold and wet with her tears, but not the cold of death-- the cold of sleep.

Pulling back, he searched her face anxiously, feeling a right fool for thinking this might work. She was a princess, yes, but he was no prince. There was no reason she should wake for him. And honestly, what would he do when she woke up? He'd saved her life, but he still wasn't completely sure she wouldn't stab him in the back first chance she got. She was a Noah, and they were raised on deceit and trickery from the cradle (if they'd even had cradles).

Spiraling quietly back into gloom, Allen told himself that it was probably best for her if she remained asleep. At least there she would pleasant visions and wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath of defeat (or victory, depending on which way she chose to look at it). There would be grand plots and fascinating characters, and knowing her, heaps of toys and candies. She would be happier there in her vision-world than out here with him and the life that had shattered around her.

She had no reason, none at all to wake up.

Thus, it was a great surprise when her fist hit him upside the head. Her muscles were weak from months of disuse, but her knuckles were still sharp and the blow hurt more for being unexpected.

"You," she rasped in her high, girlish voice, "are an absolute idiot."

Allen stayed on the floor where he'd fallen, staring up at her in undisguised shock and cradling his offended jaw. "Rhode," he said. "Are you-- is this--"

"If you're about to ask me if I'm awake, I'm going to bludgeon you with your own foot. What does it look like?"

He realized with utter bemusement that yes, she was awake, and no, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do now. A nearly irresistible urge to pick up and run away seized him. A few minutes in conference with Rabi would probably help him decide on a semi-sensible course of action. Linali and Miranda were girls and wouldn't understand, Kanda would just suggest killing her again, Komui was nearly a madman himself, only marginally more coherent...

"I was seriously beginning to wonder if you'd ever figure it out," she said with a tone that would have almost been wistful if it didn't belong to her. "I mean seriously, I did everything short of throwing a written explanation at your head."

"Explanation...?" he echoed, beginning to feel very stupid.

She took a deep breath (the deepest she'd taken since she'd fallen asleep, he thought, and thought about pointing that out for a split second until she began to speak again) and said "Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. I cried, I made faces, I even wrote the words out with my hand but you were too dense to think of trying to decipher the movements... bloody hell, my head hurts. Your level of stupidity is wounding my brain."

"I'm sorry...?" he ventured with a sheepish, confused smile.

"I would have thought that a nubile young maiden--"

(At this point Allen nearly choked on his tongue, but thought it rude to interrupt her.)

"--lying helpless on a bed would give you the idea within a day or two, but apparently you're dead from the waist down--"

(Another choked sputter here.)

"--and honestly, I thought I was going to wander around in that buggered-up world forever. Next time I'll make a point of writing 'KISS ME' on my forehead in red calligraphy before I fall into insanity, would that help?"

Allen gave up on trying to talk and opted to pick himself up off the floor, cross the short distance to the edge of the bed, and envelop her tiny, furiously rigid form into his chest. She was alive. Really, honestly alive and spitting mad. He was so happy he could hardly breathe, and wasn't quite sure why.

Maybe it was just because he hated failure. Somehow, though, he didn't think that was it, at least not all of it.

xnxnx

Linali asked him later why he felt so guilty for being glad she was alive. She's paid the price of her sins already-- every lifetime she'd ended had been taken off her lifespan. She was mortal now and would die with the rest of them.

She told him, smiling, that if he wanted to forgive Rhode, he didn't need permission from them for it.

So he did.

Maybe in time, she'd forgive him for saving her life. Rhode Camelot was not the sort of person who took lightly to being indebted to people.

But then, he had a whole lifetime to convince her.

**XxxxxxX**

**A/N: **Hope you enjoyed! Apologies to any fairytale buffs I just inadvertently offended. :)


End file.
